D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[Hussar]

In his defense, he has. Though this does not invalidate your own experiences with using the rules.

I will go back and edit my post then.

 

[Hussar]

I keep coming back to this thread for the irony.

Proclaiming that people are arguing in bad faith by misrepresenting your points, then proclaiming that you won't read posts because they are tirades (a pretty bold statement for something that hasn't been read - and quite mistaken. That particular post was quite polite), and then whacking me back on the ignore list. ROTFLMAO. I'm sorry, but that's just too funny. The irony is strong.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I keep coming back to this thread for the irony.

Proclaiming that people are arguing in bad faith by misrepresenting your points, then proclaiming that you won't read posts because they are tirades (a pretty bold statement for something that hasn't been read - and quite mistaken. That particular post was quite polite), and then whacking me back on the ignore list. ROTFLMAO. I'm sorry, but that's just too funny. The irony is strong.

I get the feeling that you would have a much easier time if this topic was posted during 4E.

 

[Hussar]

I get the feeling that you would have a much easier time if this topic was posted during 4E.

The funniest thing is that a lot of the advice that is being given in this thread would have been absolutely crucified during the 4e days. "Fail forward"? DM's deciding outcomes? Ignoring process sim play in favor of more narrative approaches to the game? There are people who are participating in this thread that I KNOW argued against the inclusion of these things in 4e that are now advocating them, completely without irony.

It truly is funny. To me, this has been WotC's greatest success. The fact that they've managed to convince people who absolutely hated these sorts of things when they were included in the game with 4e that they actually like these ideas and that the ideas are completely not from 4e. The change in writing styles is such a huge eye opener.

Tell people that the mechanics should support fail forward because that's more fun and everyone and their mother will come out of the woodwork to tell you that this is not D&D and is a terrible idea. Tell people that DM's should ensure that everyone has fun at the table and leave it up to the DM's to ensure this, and suddenly fail forward is a fantastic idea totally supported by D&D.

The the greatest triumph is that the people who argued against it ten years ago are now the biggest boosters and will STILL insist that they don't like 4e. LOL

 

[Hussar]

In any case, rolling this back around to the genre discussion. I think that, right there, becomes such a barrier in these discussions. People read this or that work (or watch this or that movie, whatever) and claim they want Genre X in their D&D. So, they go ahead and add a couple of the tropes from the genre and call it a day and that's perfectly fine. I mean, good grief, that's what D&D has done since day 1, so this isn't something new.

Then they ask for advice. And someone comes along that is deeply into the genre, whatever the genre is, or, heck, maybe isn't deeply into the genre but, understands the genre from other directions and focuses on different elements of the genre. So, even though both people are absolutely sure they are speaking about the same thing, they really, really aren't. The Cosmic Horror example, to me, is a perfect example of this. Simply making 5e more lethal and adding in some Mythos inspired monsters doesn't make it Cosmic Horror, TO ME. For @dave2008, it's perfectly fine.

But, that would mean that any advice we tried to give each other would largely be useless. To me, the idea of using a level based system like D&D with it's extremely high power curve, doesn't make any sense. I would never even attempt it. It's banging in nails with a shoe. Again, TO ME.

 

[pemerton]

@Hussar, I'd already been getting ready to reply to the first of these quoted posts when I read the second:

The main essence of a cosmic horror story, from a structural point of view, is that your protagonist will always be worse off at the end than at the beginning. Which is why D&D doesn't do Cosmic Horror very well because the core essence of D&D is the level system. At no point in a Cosmic Horror story do the protagonists get a clean win. At best they escape. And, the point of playing Cosmic Horror isn't to defeat the Cosmic Horror, because you can't. The point is to see how much your character will suffer before its inevitable end.

If there was a win condition in your game, then you weren't really playing Cosmic Horror. You were playing fairly standard heroic fantasy with horror elements.

Maybe not no-win, but, certainly more in the pyrric victory column. I think I'll stand by my assertion that virtually none of the Mythos protagonists comes out of the story stronger than they went in. Even if the horror is stopped or whatnot, no one gets out unscathed. AFAIK, that's one of the core elements of a Mythos story. Granted, if we want to go with Mythos Adjacent stories, like Howard's Conan stories, that's a different kettle of fish and far, far closer to what D&D does.

But an actual Cosmic Horror genre story where the protagonists get stronger throughout the story (ie. gain levels) and come out the other side stronger than they started, a la a Hero's Journey style fantasy story that D&D does very well? Yeah, that's not something I'd call Cosmic Horror.

I'd have to go back to check the CoC modules I mentioned.

In my Cthulhu Dark one-shots, in the first one of the PCs had his house burned down; I think another had stopped going to work. In the second one of the PCs went mad as I said; the other (a reporter) successfully filed his story - though of course he'd taken pressure on his Sanity!

There is no "level gain" or similar in Cthulhu Dark, so that aspect of your analysis doesn't bite. When I was contesting "no win", I wasn't meaning "comes out better off" but more "doesn't necessarily fail in goals".

 

[Hussar]

Oh, fair enough. Yeah, I would actually agree that no-win isn't quite the right characterization. Mythos characters "win" in the sense that Cthulhu doesn't come out of the sea and destroy the Eastern seaboard. Or they stop whatever is about to happen. So, in that sense, they "win".

What they don't do is win at no cost. They always lose something in the process, as you nicely point out. And, again, I would say that it's a pretty essential element of Mythos stories and especially games based on them, that your character will always, in the long run, lose. Or, to put it another way, if you played a year long, weekly campaign in a Mythos setting (regardless of system), and your character isn't a twisted wreck, drooling in the corner, you're doing something wrong.

 

[Aldarc]

The funniest thing is that a lot of the advice that is being given in this thread would have been absolutely crucified during the 4e days. "Fail forward"? DM's deciding outcomes? Ignoring process sim play in favor of more narrative approaches to the game? There are people who are participating in this thread that I KNOW argued against the inclusion of these things in 4e that are now advocating them, completely without irony.

It truly is funny. To me, this has been WotC's greatest success. The fact that they've managed to convince people who absolutely hated these sorts of things when they were included in the game with 4e that they actually like these ideas and that the ideas are completely not from 4e. The change in writing styles is such a huge eye opener.

Tell people that the mechanics should support fail forward because that's more fun and everyone and their mother will come out of the woodwork to tell you that this is not D&D and is a terrible idea. Tell people that DM's should ensure that everyone has fun at the table and leave it up to the DM's to ensure this, and suddenly fail forward is a fantastic idea totally supported by D&D.

The the greatest triumph is that the people who argued against it ten years ago are now the biggest boosters and will STILL insist that they don't like 4e. LOL

Dare I say it, but I think that's also because alternatives emerged for people who hated these things in 4E: e.g., Pathfinder 1, OSR community, etc. There was also a lot of newcomers in 5e who didn't care either way or are more open-minded about these techniques. Moreover, D&D's designers also happen to be fans of other systems and their designers too.

 

[pemerton]

Oh, fair enough. Yeah, I would actually agree that no-win isn't quite the right characterization. Mythos characters "win" in the sense that Cthulhu doesn't come out of the sea and destroy the Eastern seaboard. Or they stop whatever is about to happen. So, in that sense, they "win".

What they don't do is win at no cost. They always lose something in the process, as you nicely point out. And, again, I would say that it's a pretty essential element of Mythos stories and especially games based on them, that your character will always, in the long run, lose. Or, to put it another way, if you played a year long, weekly campaign in a Mythos setting (regardless of system), and your character isn't a twisted wreck, drooling in the corner, you're doing something wrong.

Yeah, I agree with this.

I think there are probably ways of reconciling D&D-ish level-up with winning at a cost. Not in AD&D, maybe not in 5e (I don't know it well enough), but in 4e I reckon it could be done.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, cosmic horror is defined as coming up against the unknowable and the incomprehensible. If you "learn" things about the horrors, they are things that are incompatible with sanity, by definition. So, yeah, the core tenet of cosmic horror is that you can't stay sane in the face of the horror. The knock on to this is that you just can't beat up the horrors. Some, sure, but these are minor plot movers or serve to damage the sanity anyway.

You port this into D&D and you run into problems straight off. Firstly, D&D character's mental states are inviolable normally. They can be temporarily affected by a spell or condition, but even then the actual thinking of the PC is under the sole control of the player. This is a core tenet of D&D -- the player controls the PC's thinking and feeling. So, the effects of going against the incomprehensible is already running afoul of D&Disms. The second thing is that D&D characters are super charged with combat effectiveness, and the D&D ruleset requires monsters be built under the combat system. Not doing so tosses the majority of the ruleset.

All this goes to say that the actual genre of Cosmic Horror is largely incompatible with the D&D ruleset.

The current D&D ruleset, maybe. In the 1e DMG there's a section on insanity that might provide a half-decent jumping off point were one looking to overlay some sort of spiralling loss of sanity mechanic onto a D&D chassis.